Loneliness

Come earth's little children pit-pat from their burrows on the hill;
Hangs within the gloom its weary head the shining daffodil.
In the valley underneath us through the fragrance flit along
Over fields and over hedgerows little quivering drops of song.
All adown the pale blue mantle of the mountains far away
Stream the tresses of the twilight flying in the wake of day.
Night comes; soon alone shall fancy follow sadly in her flight
Where the fiery dust of evening, shaken from the feet of light,
Thrusts its monstrous barriers between the pure, the good, the true,
That our weeping eyes may strain for, but shall never after view.
Only yester eve I watched with heart at rest the nebulæ
Looming far within the shadowy shining of the Milky Way;
Finding in the stillness joy and hope for a...

This is not sadness in the wood;
The yellowbird
Flits joying through the solitude,
By no thought stirred
Save of his little duskier mate
And rompings jolly.

If there's a Dryad in the wood,
She is not sad.
Too wise the spirits are to brood;
Divinely glad,
They dream with countenance sedate
Not melancholy.

High on his Patmos of the Southern Seas
Our northern dreamer sleeps,
Strange stars above him, and above his grave
Strange leaves and wings their tropic splendours wave,
While, far beneath, mile after shimmering mile,
The great Pacific, with its faery deeps,
Smiles all day long its silken secret smile.

Son of a race nomadic, finding still
Its home in regions furthest from its home,
Ranging untired the borders of the world,
And resting but to roam;
Loved of his land, and making all his boast
The birthright of the blood from which he came,
Heir to those lights that guard the Scottish coast,
And caring only for a filial fame;
Proud, if a poet, he was Scotsman most,
And bore a Scottish name.

Death, that long sought our poet, finds at last,
Dea...

How bland and sweet the greeting of this breeze
To him who flies
From crowded street and red wall's weary gleam,
Till far behind him like a hideous dream
The close dark city lies

Here, while the market murmurs, while men throng
The marble floor
Of Mammon's altar, from the crush and din
Of the world's madness let me gather in
My better thoughts once more.

Oh, once again revive, while on my ear
The cry of Gain
And low hoarse hum of Traffic die away,
Ye blessed memories of my early day
Like sere grass wet with rain!

Once more let God's green earth and sunset air
Old feelings waken;
Through weary years of toil and strife and ill,
Oh, let me feel that my good angel still
Hath not his trust forsaken.

And well do time and p...

Hills where once my love and I
Let the hours go laughing by!
All your woods and dales are sad,--
You have lost your Oread.
Falling leaves! Silent woodlands!
Half your loveliness is fled.
Golden-rod, wither now!
Winter winds, come hither now!
All the summer joy is dead.

There's a sense of something gone
In the grass I linger on.
There's an under-voice that grieves
In the rustling of the leaves.
Pine-clad peaks! Rushing waters!
Glens where we were once so glad!
There's a light passed from you,
There's a joy outcast from you,--
You have lost your Oread.

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charactry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love; then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

'Tis He whose yester-evening's high disdain
Beat back the roaring storm, but how subdued
His day-break note, a sad vicissitude!
Does the hour's drowsy weight his glee restrain?
Or, like the nightingale, her joyous vein
Pleased to renounce, does this dear Thrush attune
His voice to suit the temper of yon Moon
Doubly depressed, setting, and in her wane?
Rise, tardy Sun! and let the Songster prove
(The balance trembling between night and morn
No longer) with what ecstasy upborne
He can pour forth his spirit. In heaven above,
And earth below, they best can serve true gladness
Who meet most feelingly the calls of sadness.

    O, gentle shade of quiet woods,
        Where nature dwells in leafy halls,
        I love the sacred voice that falls
    In music o'er thy solitudes!
    Within thine arms the weary heart
        Is hidden from the toils of men,
    And pleasure makes ambition start
        Into a nobler life again.

    Among the fragrant shadows throng
        With all the riches of their truth,
        Glad echoes from the days of youth
    And mingle into laughing song;
    While angel fingers touch the keys
        That slumber in the silent breast,
    Till mem'ry wakes her lullabies
        And childhood fancies rock to rest.

    Again the hours of early joy
        Upon the aged years intrude,
        And dance amid the summer wood
    T...

In the hills' embraces holden,
    In a valley filled with glooms,
Lies a cemetery olden,
    Strewn with countless mould'ring tombs.

Ancient graves o'erhung with mosses,
    Crumbling stones, effaced and green,--
Venturesome is he who crosses,
    Night or day, the lonely scene.

Blasted trees and willow streamers,
    'Midst the terror round them spread,
Seem like awe-bound, silent dreamers
    In this garden of the dead.

One bird, anguish stricken, lingers
    In the shadow of the vale,
First and best of feathered singers,--
    'Tis the churchyard nightingale.

As from bough to bough he flutters,
    Sweetest songs of woe and wail
Through his gift divine he utters
    For the dreamers in the vale.

Listen how ...

I

Ere-while of Musick, and Ethereal mirth,
Wherwith the stage of Ayr and Earth did ring,
And joyous news of heav'nly Infants birth,
My muse with Angels did divide to sing;
But headlong joy is ever on the wing,
In Wintry solstice like the shortn'd light
Soon swallow'd up in dark and long out-living night.

II

For now to sorrow must I tune my song,
And set my Harpe to notes of saddest wo,
Which on our dearest Lord did sease er'e long,
Dangers, and snares, and wrongs, and worse then so,
Which he for us did freely undergo.
Most perfect Heroe, try'd in heaviest plight
Of labours huge and hard, too hard for human wight.

III

He sov'ran Priest stooping his regall head
That dropt with odorous oil down his fair eyes,
Poor fles...

It came to me in my sleep,
And I rose from my sleep and went
Out in the night to weep,
Over the bristling bent.
With my soul, it seemed, I stood
Alone in a moaning wood.

And my soul said, gazing at me,
"Shall I show you another land
Than other this flesh can see?"
And took into hers my hand.
We passed from the wood to a heath
As starved as the ribs of Death.

Three skeleton trees we pass,
Bare bones on an iron moor,
Where every leaf and the grass
Was a thorn and a thistle hoar.
And my soul said, looking on me,
"The past of your life you see."

And a swine-herd passed with his swine,
Deformed; and I heard him growl;
Two eyes of a sottish shine
Leered under two brows as foul.
And my soul said, "This is the ...